


Mirror

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage, The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Background Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 19:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13084239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Jake needs saving. Luckily for him, a certain thief is already on the case, even if she is looking for someone else.





	Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/gifts).



> I hope you like this. I think it wants to be longer, but we'll maybe have to have it as a snapshot into a potential longer adventure!

Jake stifles a groan. His head is pounding, and he has no memory of being back home in a bar brawl. Not done that in quite a while, now. He doesn’t want to think too hard on that one.

Pressing the heel of one hand to his right eye, which seems to be trying to form a knot of pain, he opens his left eye and sees a rough wall. Stone. No markings. Dirt floor, hard-packed. There’s a door, iron, set in the far wall. 

Come on, think. He’s had to think his way out of all kinds of things. He should be able to think about his own last memories. 

An image of Cassie coalesces in his mind. Not exactly a surprise: she’s there most of the time. It’s weird how so many poems are about her now. Or maybe not. Still, this time he remembers walking her through controlling her senses, remembers coaching her to link the smells to a memory. 

Maybe he can use that.

Closing his left eye, he eases his mind into something close to meditation. He’s not the most patient of people, but fighting isn’t just with the body, and he’s learned how to do this. Okay. Scents. He has to have some memory of scent, somewhere in his recent memory. 

There’s something like gunpowder, but not, and something like sawdust, but it doesn’t resolve into anything more concrete. 

Damn it. He can’t get anymore. 

The clang of the door opening makes him jump, and he forces himself to his feet, hands up ready to fight, as it swings wide. It reveals a woman dressed in dark clothing, her hair tied back and her expression focused. She frowns at him.

“How are you doing that?” she asks. It’s at least faintly accusatory. 

“Doing what?” Jake asks, his guard still up, even if he’s starting to feel foolish. “Standing in a locked room?”

The woman snorts and spins on her heel, disappearing out of sight. A moment later, she’s back, dragging a man who has to be three times her weight. He’s not moving. Jake knows he must look disbelieving as his possibly-rescuer leaves the man slumped on the floor and nods, apparently satisfied at a job well done. When she looks back at Jake, he drops his hands and tries a smile.

“You, er, you here to rescue me?”

“No,” she says. There’s a beat where she just stares at him, unmoving, before she adds to it. “But we help people, so I can rescue you, anyway.”

Jake nods, his eyebrows raised.

“Okay,” he says, drawing the word out. “Thanks.”

And if Cassie were here, she’d have words about him being sarcastic at someone who was saving him, but even with the people Jake has got to know, and care about, over the last few years, this woman is odd. 

She nods, and Jake almost hears Jenkins’ voice in the back of his head, warning him about making deals with magical entities. 

As he follows her out of the room, and watches her shut and relock the door, he decides he has to ask.

“Say, you ain’t a Fey, now, are you?”

“Eliot says they don’t exist,” she says, as though she might say yes otherwise, as though she might be Fey but Eliot’s word would be enough for her to change species. She glances at him and smiles, and if Jake had met her in a bar, and if he wasn’t already in love with Cassie, he’d want to see about getting her to smile like that again. “I’m a thief.” 

“I know a thief,” he says. 

She looks to be filing this under ‘that’s nice, but I have work to do’, and gestures for him to go ahead of her down the hallway. There’s something about it that’s almost natural, like she already knows him, but Jake is sure they’ve never met. 

The woman opens four more doors, each one separated by a whole load of distance along the curving wall of the hallway, and every one of them is empty. 

“Hey,” Jake says, at last, because the silent prowling is getting to him. “You gotta name?”

“Yes,” she says.

She stops at another door and gets to work on the lock. 

“You wanna tell me what it is?” Jake asks. “I’m Jake.”

“Parker.”

He can’t tell from the way she says it if it’s a first name or not, but that looks to be all he’s getting. 

In any case he doesn’t have time for any more questions before she opens the door, and this time it isn’t onto an empty room. There’s someone crumpled on the ground, looking like all their strings got cut, and Parker makes a noise a little like a growl and heads towards them.

“Hey!” Jake reaches out and is almost surprised when he manages to grab her arm. “Do you know who that is? Could be dangerous.”

“Of course he’s dangerous,” she says, and shrugs out of his hold. 

Jake follows her over to the prisoner and drops into a crouch by her side, wanting to tell her he’ll check on the guy on the floor, but she already has her hands out. The man on the floor doesn’t make any noise when Parker sets her hand on his shoulder, and Jake doesn’t miss the tension in her as she leans in and feels for a pulse. 

“He’s alive,” Jake says, when she closes her eyes and breathes out. 

“Yeah.”

“You know this guy? This is who you were looking for? Who you’re rescuing?”

A tight nod. 

“Okay. Then let’s get him out of here. I can carry him.”

Sudden movement sends Jake falling back onto his ass, and he isn’t sure how the man goes from out cold on the ground to on his feet and looking ready for a fight. Parker is on her feet, too, looking watchful, and Jake notes the way her eyes track over this guy. Probably looking for injuries. At the moment, the long hair over the man’s face is making it hard to tell much, but Jake’s pretty sure there’s some swaying. 

“You gonna need a hand, man?” Jake asks, standing and dusting himself off. 

“Touch me and lose the hand.” 

And that’s more a snarl than anything.

“Eliot!” 

Parker sounds like someone who’s used to giving this man orders, and like she’s confident she’ll be listened to. Baird would like her. 

“Hey, I’m just trying to help, brother,” Jake says, hands up. “Don’t want you falling on your face on our way out of here.”

The man, Parker’s Eliot, reaches up a hand that Jake can’t help notice is shaking, and pushes back that long hair. He looks ill, or drugged, but that isn’t what has Jake staring. 

“You…” he says. 

Eliot’s eyes narrow, and if it weren’t for the scowl, and the hair, Jake would have felt at his own face to see if his brows were creased.

“You look like me,” the man says, sounding more irritated than shocked, like he thinks Jake has done this to wind him up. “’Cept softer.”

“Least I know what scissors are for,” Jake says, because he really isn’t up for processing this. 

The twitch of this Eliot’s lip could be any number of things, but there’s just a touch of warmth in his eyes when he replies. It’s not the kind of warmth Jake wants to see.

“So do I.”

And he doesn’t add anything else, but Jake still resolves never to let this man have a pair of scissors near him. 

“Are you fighting?” Parker asks. “We don’t have time for you to fight with other-you. Hardison’s got us a window out and we need to move.”

“So we’re just accepting some guy’s here looking like nerd-me?” Eliot asks, but there’s no hesitation or aggression in him as Parker steps forward and slots in under his arm, taking his weight. “You don’t think maybe we should look into that?”

“He’s called Jake,” Parker says, like that answers every question that needs asking. “I’m saving him. And you.”

Eliot shoots Jake such a look that even after everything he’s faced and after improving his fighting skills so much, he keeps quiet and follows the two of them at a slight distance. They go on like that, with Parker helping Eliot and with door after door passing by on their left, until a warmer light beckons from around the curve. 

“It’s all right. I came in through here,” Parker says, not pausing, and that must be in response to some tell in Eliot’s body language, because Jake didn’t hear him say anything. 

Even with Parker’s assurance, Jake steps warily, something about that glow a little too familiar. As they round the last section of the wall and find themselves in a large room with a vaulted ceiling, he groans. 

“What is it?” Eliot asks.

“Magic,” Jake says. 

The whole place reeks of it. He doesn’t need Cassie’s sight to pick up on the tells. That vase over on a wooden plinth is clearly from Ancient Sumer, with the carvings depicting Inanna, but there are glyphs worked into the design that show this is more than just alabaster. And the tapestry on the wall by the staircase is woven of what Jake is almost certain is some form of fate-thread. Since that whole thing with the Loom, his hands tingle when he’s near anything like that. And over there-

“You what?” 

Eliot’s voice is more of a snapping growl, and Jake startles. 

“Hey, man. No need to shout in my ear.”

“You weren’t answering me,” Eliot says, from far too close. “What you going on about? Magic? Magic ain’t real!”

Jake takes a step away, casting a look at Parker, who isn’t holding Eliot up anymore but who is keeping a close eye on him from a few feet away.

“Yeah,” Jake says. “It is. I should know.”

“Why? You some wizard?” Eliot asks. “You got a degree in wizarding?”

“Wizardry,” Jake says, “and no. History, art, literature, yeah. But-”

“You’re Dr Jake?” Parker asks, and whatever heat is powering Eliot right now doesn’t seem to have reached his friend, who just sounds intrigued and a tiny bit delighted.

“Dr Jacob Stone,” he says, avoiding Eliot’s gaze for the moment. “And I’m a Librarian.”

“Parker, thief,” Parker says.

“You don’t have to introduce yourself like this is some kinda bonding exercise, Parker,” Eliot tells her. “We can’t trust anything this guy says, anyway.”

“Sophie says it’s polite,” Parker states, as though that ends that dispute. “And now you have to share.”

Jake looks in time to see a complicated set of expressions try to exist at the same time on Eliot’s face. He’d need more than a few degrees to help him interpret all of that, but resigned affection, even love, looks to be part of it. 

“Eliot Spencer,” he grits out, seemingly through his teeth. “I keep her safe.”

Warning loud and clear. Jake nods and resists taking another step back. 

Jake has played at tough. Hell, he’s been in enough bar brawls in his time, and since joining the Library he’s trained in martial arts and fought ogres and all kinds of things. There’s something about this man, though, about this Eliot, that makes Jake feel all he’s been doing has been playing. 

“I hear you, man,” he says. “So, how’d we get out of here? You said there was a window?”

Parker points, and both Jake and Eliot turn to follow the movement. Jake notices Eliot isn’t quite steady on his feet, but that doesn’t make the guy seem any less dangerous.

Over on the other side of the tapestry is a stand-mirror. It’s tall and silver and ornate.

“That’s a mirror, Parker,” Eliot says.

She nods. 

“I know. It’s some kind of doorway. Hardison got the security systems on the building they took you to shut down, but only for another thirty minutes or so. And when I got in, I found out the mirror is a doorway.”

“A magic mirror,” Jake says, already moving forward. “And it’s a portal? They can be used to communicate, some of them, or to predict the future. Or to judge beauty pageants, but not sure that was ever the best use of one. You usually need some kind of spell to activate them. You see-”

“Don’t recall asking for a magical mirror lecture,” Eliot says. “You sure you don’t just…touch the glass and go?”

“Touch the…?” It’s Jake’s turn to scowl, and he makes good use of it. “Thought you said magic isn’t real. What makes you think you’d know how to work it?”

Eliot shrugs. 

“Any sufficiently advanced technology,” he says, like his worldview can make way for highly advanced mirrors used to transport people much more easily than he can accept magic is a thing. 

“All right, Clarke,” Jake says. “Only I’ve been around magic for the past few years now. It’s my job to keep it safe, to keep people safe from it, and I know what I’m doing, so how about you back off and let me work? Hmm?”

“Is this meant to be making the air wobble?” Parker asks, from a good way across the room.

Jake didn’t see her move, but the way Eliot turns and looks at her just screams it’s something she does a fair bit, appearing somewhere you didn’t think she’d be. Jake wonders again if she’s Fey, or something like it. She’s standing near the Sumerian vase, in front of what looks like a lute, one finger pointing as though she’s about to prod it.

“Don’t prod the lute, Parker!” Eliot snaps.

“But it’s making things wobble,” Parker says.

Jake leaves the mirror and makes it to her side just about as Eliot does. Looking closely, he can see a slight rippling in the air. Very slight.

“How’d you notice this?” he asks. “We were all the way over there.”

Parker shrugs.

“I notice things. It’s making my head feel weird. Make it stop.”

Jake doesn’t feel that saying he has no idea how will go over well, and it’s not like he’s new at this. He can’t see anything playing the strings, but now he really focuses on them he sees them moving, just slightly, as though some invisible fingers are hard at work. 

“We need a counter-melody,” he says, and once again wishes Cassie were here. She can work out patterns and counters in an instant. Still, this close to it he feels woozy, and he glances at Eliot to see the guy visibly swaying. “Let me see what I can do.”

He picks it up, pausing for a moment to see if anything will explode, but all that happens is he’s now holding the lute. 

Parker’s head is right next to his, her cheek almost touching his, and she lowers her voice like she’s imparting a secret.

“It’s going hmm hm hmmmm hmm hm,” she part says, part sings, and it’s not like having Cassie, but he can use that.

It takes him a few minutes to work out the counter melody, but as soon as he plucks the last note, Eliot shakes his head and stands steadier. Parker sighs.

“That’s better. It’s been making the inside of my head feel thick and squishy since I got here.”

“How come it worked more on me?” Eliot asks, like it’s a personal affront. 

Jake is sure Jenkins can come up with a reason, but right now they need to get out, and he leaves Eliot and Parker arguing about why a magical lute would make Eliot wobble more than it did Parker, and goes back to working on the mirror. 

“Did you do or say anything to get it to work before?” he calls after a while, when they fall quiet. 

He gets no answer, and twists around to see what they’re doing, and…oh. Oh, right. Not just friends, then. 

Parker has her hands in Eliot’s hair, and he’s holding her as though she’s the most precious thing in the room. Jake doesn’t want to interrupt that kiss, but they really do need to be getting going. Parker said 30 minutes were left.

“Guys?”

They break apart, and Parker leans around Eliot.

“It was just open, but I’m pretty sure the person I saw go through it said some words. He was looking at the top of the frame.”

Jake inspects the curling silver above the glass, and sees what look to be words. It’s one of the languages he doesn’t read, though. 

“Damn it,” he says. 

Eliot and Parker come to stand next to him, and Eliot snorts.

“You telling me this is a ‘spell?’” he asks, before speaking words Jake doesn’t know. 

As the surface of the mirror ripples, turning blue and emerald and amber and back to silver, Eliot shakes his head. 

“Literally just had to tell it where to take you. Like pushing the right button on an elevator.”

Jake pushes down the urge to tell the guy, again, that he knows what magic is, and decides to keep that speech until later. Maybe he can persuade Jenkins and Baird to let him bring these two to the Library, see how long Eliot keeps up his attitude when he’s faced with Excalibur flying about.

“Where’d you tell it to take us?”

“Portland,” Eliot says. “We going?”

Portland. Well, at least it’s where Jake needs to be. Then he can work out how he got here, how Eliot looks like him, and whether they have a new threat on the horizon with these creepy cells and this hall of magical objects. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

Parker flashes a grin at him and dives through first, followed a moment later by Eliot, and Jake takes one last look around. He has the feeling this is going to come back to haunt them. For now, though, he needs to get back and see Cassie, to see all of his family. 

He turns and steps through the mirror, and goes home.


End file.
